The World Health Organization announced on Thursday that a clinical trial of two experimental treatments for Bundibugyo virus disease has enrolled its first patient in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The PARTNERS trial, sponsored by WHO and coordinated with research institutes in Kinshasa, Antwerp, and Oxford, will evaluate the monoclonal antibody MBP134 and the antiviral remdesivir, alone and in combination. No approved vaccine or therapy exists for this Ebola strain. The adaptive design allows investigators to modify treatment arms as data accumulate; researchers at the University of Oxford say results could be available within months.

The outbreak that the trial seeks to address has now spread to Kisangani, a city of 1.5 million people and a key transport node in the country’s northeast. As of 30 June, DR Congo had recorded 1,406 confirmed cases and 438 deaths, a fatality rate of 31 per cent, with Ituri province accounting for more than 83 per cent of fatalities. The Kisangani case involved a pregnant woman whose body was moved secretly from Ituri, highlighting the danger of unsafe burials. Uganda has confirmed 20 cases and two deaths. Response efforts are being undermined by violence and mistrust: on 30 June, a crowd set fire to an Ebola isolation centre in Nia Nia, Ituri, after disputing the diagnosis; seven suspected cases fled and two bodies were taken. A police officer was killed. Health workers in Bunia estimate that half of symptomatic people are avoiding clinics, complicating contact tracing. In Uganda, a Marburg virus case was confirmed in a one-year-old child in Kyegegwa District, detected through heightened Ebola surveillance; no contacts have shown symptoms.

The overstretched health system is amplifying the risk from other infectious diseases. Malaria, which presents with similar early symptoms, is endemic in the affected provinces; two bed-net distribution campaigns were cancelled last year in Ituri and North Kivu due to insecurity. The Global Fund is pre-positioning antimalarial stocks and evaluating mass drug administration, but officials in Geneva and Nairobi caution that malaria deaths could surpass Ebola fatalities. The Africa CDC estimates the response requires $1.4 billion, with only $120 million committed so far. The next concrete milestone will be the initial readout from the PARTNERS trial, which investigators hope will guide treatment decisions before the outbreak recedes.